Long Distance Problems
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| Mon, 07-09-2007 - 11:12pm |
ok.... so i have a pretty complex situation that i'll try to explain. maybe it isnt as bad of one as i think.
so my current girlfriend(who lives in st.louis) and i(pittsburgh) started talking online a few years ago(summer of 2004). we started talking on facebook randomly(in a common interests group) and remained friends that ways for about 3-4 months. we talked non-stop. and when i say non-stop, i mean a good 6-7-8 hours a day split from sending e-mails while we were at school, talking on instant messanger when we got home, and then on the phone for a good part of the night. sometimes we would stay on the phone until 3am. it continued that way all through highschool. i went off to college(she is 2 years younger than me) in the fall of 2005 and decided that she was someone worth waiting for(even before i met her in person), so we had this exclusive relationship without actually being called boyfriend/girlfriend. that gray area relationship continued all the way through my sophomore year in college(this past year). since then, we have spent time together... i've visited twice for 8-9 days each, and she has visited once. we have wonderful chemistry and we both recognize we make eachother happier than anyone else has.
earlier this summer(in may), she decides that she wants the tag of my girlfriend. i found it odd that she waited so long but i was so happy. so all this summer we had that, but now that she is going off to college, her friends are telling her that she should go out and date, and i think she is falling into the common trend of her friends and thinking maybe we need to take a break.
needless to say, im pissed. i gave up my freshman/sophomore year at college with many opportunities with girls and now she isnt willing to do the same. she is visiting in a couple of weeks. do you think we should just sit down during the trip and really analyze things... and if she wants to see other people break it off? i mean whats the point of a long distance friendship? the way i've seen it, is that if this isnt going to end up in a meaningful relationship, whats the point? its not like there are physical benefits.
additional information: she has brought up in many cases the strong possibility of us being together in the future(marriage) and things like that. we both lost our virginity to one another. as of late, the relationship has been hard because we are both very busy and sometimes we can only talkon the phone 30 minutes a day.

Brooksy, I've been delaying replying to you because I know you're not going to like what I will say. I was hoping someone else may chime in with good advice which you would like, but it hasn't happened yet.
So here goes:
I'm old enough to be mother to one of you. And if one of you was my child asking for advice, I would be advising you to not do a long distance relationship with someone you don't know.
I understand that you feel you know each other thoroughly. But people interact very differently over the email, IM, phone etc to what they do in real life. I know you've spent some time with her in real life, but it's not nearly enough to truly know her.
Please don't put her on a guilt trip regarding you missing out on girls during your freshman/sophomore year. This was your choice to do. And if you didn't want to do it willingly, you shouldn't have done it.
You asked what you should do when you see her soon. I agree that you should talk about this in detail and I agree you should end it if she truly does want to see others. But I wouldn't wait till she comes to visit. I'd do it on the phone now so that you can get your life in order and not be in this state of limbo. Besides, do you really want to have her around if you've just broken up with her? How can you possibly be happy if you know she's seeing other people? Even having her as a friend would make you feel bad and remind you of what you wanted to have.
But just to reiterate, I still don't think it's a good idea to persue a long distance relationship with someone you've spent very little real time with.
thank you for the reply. i think its something both of us realize, but its just hard. we have tried to cut the relationship off twice. once in october of 2006 when we stopped talking for about a month(she came calling back) and then again in december of that same year(it took her about a week to come calling back). we have seen other people in those periods, and things just werent the same. i had a girlfriend for about 2 months and it just wasnt as good as when i spent time with my st.louis girl.
im going to be talking to her today in depth about everything and hopefully we can come to a solution.
thanks again!
I completely agree with aisha. Long distance relationships very, VERY rarely work out unless you have already established a close connection with someone. And even then, unless you have a definite plan to end the "long distance" part of the relationship and eventually end up in the same place together, it's either going to fizzle out or end in a lot of resent.
Don't make her feel guilty about this; she was just being logical about the situation and from my perspective it was the right thing to do. Just because you didn't date anyone in "real life" for that period of time does not mean that you'll never date anyone again or that you wasted that part of your life. Unless your life revolves 100% around your girlfriend then you're spending that time doing other things. Surely you're in college to gain other things than a girlfriend? :)
Don't let this experience gnaw at you too much. You tried and it didn't work out. You still have a ton of time left in college. I dated a total loser from freshman until senior year and I still went out and had fun. Sure the relationship went south but I didn't feel like I had wasted my life. It was an experience that I learned a lot from.
College is THE BEST time to meet and date women. There will be someone else who makes you forget this girl you barely even knew, and you'll gain a lot of perspective from it. Good luck!
Welcome to the board brooksy38,
I agree with iv_aisha.